We're delighted to announce today the launch of our "Skinny Fit" range of clothes, seen modelled here by the lovely Filippa for a forthcoming international poster campaign:
Our Stick Insect Skinny Fit poster
Please note that this image has not been digitally manipulated in any way. Filippa is a healthy and beautiful young …

Very convincing

Mr.

Wow!

Why oh why...

I am baffled as to why the fashion industry appears so fixated on anorexic women. I have discussed this subject with a lot of my male friends and of the two of them who say they like slim (not skinny) women, one is gay and the other bisexual (the gay one obviously didn't like women quite as much as some of my other friends). All of the rest of us (and that certainly includes me) like women to look like women not like little boys.

Until recently I had always thought this was just an odd curiousity but it never bothered me. However, I now have a 4 year old daughter, and the thought that she would ever feel under pressure to look like she hadn't eaten for three months and was days from death is genuinely disturbing.

Come on fashionistas - sort yourselves out and get some real women on the front covers of your vacuous magazines and catalogues.

But where is the manchester airport X-Ray version?

@dunncha

@ Simon Langley

"Until recently I had always thought this was just an odd curiousity but it never bothered me. However, I now have a 4 year old daughter, and the thought that she would ever feel under pressure to look like she hadn't eaten for three months and was days from death is genuinely disturbing."

Same here. I'd rather have my (also 4 year old) daughter looking like Kelly Osbourne than Keira Knightley... or even skinnier.

Anyway... El Reg, are you actually paying Mr. Haines to have so much fun? :-)

@ Lutin

Ralph Lauren's wallet is bigger than her pelvis.

I am minded of a quotation by the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. When asked why he gave his kids ugly names like Moon Unit and Dweezil he simply replied "Consider for a moment any beauty in the name Ralph".

I know why they fixate on anorexics ...

It's simple ... Woman looks at ad, thinks she's a big fat cow by comparison. Woman is unhappy. DING! Unhappy consumers spend lots more. Think I'm kidding? Then why do alcohol ads use all kinds of tricks, including subliminal advertising, to make people unhappy? There was one notorious print advert from Heinekin, looked inncoent, showed a bottle, a wheel of cheese, sitting on a butcher block table. Carved into the wood, faintly, on one side, were the words "be sad".

Peronally...

...I think "fashion" rags should be under-the-counter-sold-in-brown-paper-bag material. Forget soft porn mags* -- THESE are what is damaging to women.

I suggest a gulag be created from which all such fashion designers must work. The hunger pains will be good for their art.

--------

*going by the porno mags my brother kept through his teen years, I didn't really see anything degrading to women in the paper-shop nuddie mags - just nudity, which is natural. The "men's" mags that are not explicitly porno are much worse for attitudes to women (possibly this is more so in Australia which has a noticeable us-and-them gender divide enforced from both sides). Men's mags are still not a touch on the "fashion" rags, though, if only because the misogyny of the former is laughably obvious.

@Simon Langley, bisexual

Why the hell does it make a difference in this context if one is bisexual? I understand your reasoning about one being gay thus doesn't really count in terms of sexual attraction, but I'm sure there are plenty of bisexual men who don't like particularly small women. When it comes to sexual tastes within the female gender bisexual men aren't really going to be any different to straight men now are they? Just as bisexual women won't have a different range of tastes in men to straight women.

Get a f***ing clue and realise that sexual orientation *only* affects the gender of your attraction. Bisexual men are just straight men that are attracted to other men as well, gay men are straight men who are attracted to men instead of women. I'm sure plenty of gay men love football, and plenty of straight men (well some anyway) can't stand it. Personally I can't stand sport. That is nothing to do with any orientation I may or may not have.

Simon Langley, bisexual reply

Actually Simon, gay men aren't straight men who are attracted to the same sex. By definition they are not straight, they are gay. Gay men are not straight, straight men are not gay.

Repeat after me, "The gay man is not a straight man". Also, a bisexual man is not a straight man who also likes men. A bisexual man is not straight because he is attracted to men as well. That makes him not straight.

This is just your own confusion about your own state because around straight men you want to be seen as straight but around gay men you want to get laid. That makes you bisexual, not straight.

Just because you like the football in the company of boofheads doesn't mean that you are straight, nor them. They're watching other boofheads running around in tight shorts, so perhaps you are all a bit gay.

@Rex Alfie Lee

There seems to be a degree of confusion over who said what here.

I appear to have rubbed Craig 28 up the wrong way with my initial comment (see "Why oh why" above), but you should have directed your remarks to Craig 28 not me. Particularly the remark about football; Craig 28 may like football, but I'm with you, I prefer penguins.